


you are always here with me

by settledthesun



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Apocalypse, Character Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:24:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4623507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/settledthesun/pseuds/settledthesun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘You’re not freaking out about this, are you?’ she asks, head propped on her hand.</p><p>‘About the fact that my roommate might have something to do with the disappearances? No, of course not, why would I be freaking out?’</p><p>‘We don’t know for sure she’s involved. And besides, there’s no way I’d let anything happen to you.’ She nudges Laura’s shoulder. ‘You know that, right?’</p><p>or</p><p>Five times Danny and Laura fall asleep together, and one time they don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are always here with me

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this a few weeks ago, and I swear it was meant as a fluffy oneshot and then, well, this happened. I've binge-watched Person of Interest (which is amazing, by the way, go watch it, Root and Shaw have one of the best dynamics on TV) so I'm going to choose to blame it on that.
> 
> 1\. This does actually end up pretty damn angsty, so just a bit of warning for you there. It's also a lot more Hollence-heavy than most of my Danny-centric fics.  
> 2\. I decided to use a bunch of lines from my favourites poets throughout because I thought it would be an even more devastating experience for you all. You're welcome.  
> 3\. Also I used the Danny-Squad's otter/don't drift away headcanon because i'm a monster.  
> 4\. Title is taken from Susie Suh's 'Here With Me'. Listen whilst you read, ya know, if you're not feeling sad enough.  
> 5\. I'm still worried about Danny's fate on the show.

(i.)

 _'I love you because I know no other way than this:_  
  
_where I does not exist, nor you,_  
_so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,_  
_so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.'_  
             — Pablo Neruda, (I Do Not Love You)

 

The first time it happens is when they’ve spent all evening going through the Alchemy club’s party photos.

Laura’s already drifted off once or twice whilst Danny’s been gulping down coffee in order to keep her drooping eyes open for last couple of hours.

Once they recognise Carmilla in the photos, Laura buries her face in her hands and groans (‘of course I’m living with a potential murderer. _Of course_. My dad’s gonna have a field day’) whilst Danny stretches her arms over her head in an attempt to release the tension that’s grown over the course of the evening.

‘Well, look, at least we’ve got a lead. And it’s,’ Danny checks the time on her phone, ‘two am? Wow, I did not realise it was that late. But at least it looks like your possible murderer/kidnapper roommate won’t be back tonight.’

‘That makes me feel so much better,’ Laura mumbles from behind her hands.

‘C’mon, Hollis. You’re in desperate need of some sleep.’

‘I think I’ll just stay here. Resign myself to the worst. This desk shall be my resting place.’

‘Don’t think I won’t carry you over there.’

‘Ugh, fine,’ Laura says, before getting up and throwing herself onto her bed, face down.

Danny rolls her eyes and laughs, lying on her side beside Laura, used to the way her feet dangle off the end of the bed.

‘You’re not freaking out about this, are you?’ she asks, head propped on her hand.

‘About the fact that my roommate might have something to do with the disappearances? No, of course not, why would I be freaking out?’

‘We don’t know for sure she’s involved. And besides, there’s no way I’d let anything happen to you.’ She nudges Laura’s shoulder. ‘You know that, right?’

Laura looks up, eyes peeking out over her arm, and she takes Danny in for a moment, eyes soft. Then she’s smiling and shaking her head. ‘Oh of course, because otherwise who would you have to drag you into dangerous situations.’

‘No one dragged me into anything, Lois Lane. I’m happy to help.’

Laura doesn’t reply, just smiles, and Danny drags her eyes away, knowing she might not be able to if she watches Laura, clothes crumpled and hair mussed, for much longer. Instead, she stares out the window for a while, moonlight shining through the panes and onto the floor from where they’d neglected to pull the curtains shut.

When she turns her attention back to Laura, the other girl has fallen asleep, her right hand clutching the blanket. Danny breaths a soft laugh, before carefully extracting the blanket from Laura’s grasp and placing it over her.

The blanket’s soft in her palm and she runs her fingers over it. She repositions her arm, feeling the tell-tale signs of cramping, and realises how tired she is. Laura’s breath is tickling Danny’s wrist with each exhale.

She counts thirty seven tickles until she follows Laura into sleep.

 

 

(ii.)

_'I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.'  
            ― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles_

 

It’s been five days since they captured Carmilla.

Danny would happily be among the first to say that Carmilla’s kind of an asshole. But a _vampire?_ Yeah, she did not see that one coming.

Then came LaF’s insane explanation and the blood and the _seduction eyes,_ and-, she never wants to be one of _those_ girls, but she’d kind of been beginning to think that she and Laura had something going on. Something real. And supernatural plotting and seductive vampires were really the last thing she wanted to deal with right now.

Right now, she thinks she could actually use an umbrella more than anything else.

She’d been marking essays in the cramped office she gets to use once a week for her office hours, when the heavens had opened up and drenched campus within seconds. She had just sighed and resigned herself to getting soaked the bone, stepping out into the humid evening air when she notices a familiar figure taking cover against the wall of one of the campus coffee shops. Breaking into a gentle jog, she heads over to Laura and offers her an easy grin.

‘Nice weather, we’re having,’ she opens with.

‘Truly delightful,’ Laura replies with an eye-roll. ‘I’m finally able to get away from my room and the supernatural roommate from Hell for a few hours, and I end up getting caught in a downpour. I am having _such_ a good week.’

‘I’m sure you’ve been through worse, Hollis. Come on, I’m heading back to my room and the Summer Society Lodge is way closer. You can wait the rain out there, if you want.’

‘You are a godsend, Danny Lawrence.’

‘Well in that case, I’ll race you there,’ Danny says, before taking off in the opposite direction, laughing when she hears Laura’s squeak of disbelief.

Ten minutes later, Danny’s towelling her hair off, having changed into some dry clothes and offering Laura some spare clothes from her drawer as she went to dry herself off in the bathroom. She sighs, stretching before settling down on her bed, picking up a beaten up Woolf novel and carrying on where she left off whilst she waits for Laura.

When Laura steps out of the bathroom a few minutes later, sweats bunching at the ankle and shirt baggy on her small frame, she looks so achingly lovely that Danny’s sure she can physically feel her heart swell. She’s suddenly so overwhelmed by Laura and _Danny & Laura _and the two of them in her room that she doesn’t know what to do. Her head is flooded with images of what could be. Lazy Sundays and Monday evenings and Saturday mornings, just the two of them. Waking up together, going to bed together. In this moment she wants nothing more than to pull Laura to her, to kiss her soundly and to keep kissing her for as long as she’ll allow. She wants to introduce her to her mother, and watch her play with her siblings and hold her hand as she charms her few remaining hometown friends.

She wants Laura, and the two of them together, and everything in between.

But this is Silas. It’s Silas, and there are a bunch of girls missing and a centuries-old vampire tied up in a dorm room across campus. Now’s just not the time.

‘What?’ Laura asks, when she catches Danny smiling at her from the bed.

( _I love you. Deeply and truly, and in an ideal world you would know that and speak the words back to me against my lips_ , she wants to say.)

‘Nothing,’ Danny says instead. ‘Just the way you look tonight.’

‘Wow, I never realised you were such a dork,’ she teases, coming to sit next to Danny.

‘If you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you,’ Danny jokes, poking Laura in her side.

‘Noted. Hey, is it okay if maybe crash here tonight? LaF and Perry say they have everything covered with Carmilla and I just- I could really do with a night’s sleep where I don’t have to worry about being mauled to death.’ There’s a nervousness in Danny’s voice that makes her heart ache just that little bit.

‘Of course, whatever you need,’ Danny says, bringing her arm to rest around Laura’s shoulders.

Laura smiles, letting her head rest against Danny’s shoulder, and nods at the book resting on Danny’s lap.

‘Read to me, then.’

Danny never could say no to Laura Hollis.

 

 

Later, when Laura rolls over in her sleep, her arm coming to settle across Danny’s waist and her head tucked against her collarbone, Danny lets herself imagine that it could always be like this.

 

 (iii.)

_‘Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.’  
                 - Richard Siken, Little Beast_

 

 

Carmilla’s been dead for a week. Laura’s not much better off.

‘When was the last time you slept?’ Danny asks.

Laura doesn’t reply.

Danny looks away, unable to bear the ache, and lays in silence on her back next to Laura.

She moves her hand towards Laura’s and lets them brush. When Laura doesn’t protest, she laces their fingers together and gives them a squeeze.

Laura turns to look at her properly for the first time. Danny glances at their joined hands and then back at Laura.

‘So you don’t drift away.’

 

 

 

(iv.)

_‘listen: there's a hell_

_of a good universe next door; let's go’_

         -  _e.e. cummings, pity this busy monter, manukind_

 

Months pass, things change.

Laura leaves.

Laura comes back.

Students die, enemies return, new enemies arrive.

Laura and Carmilla get together.

Laura and Carmilla break up.

Danny throws herself into protecting everyone. Even when it means going against her Sisters and going up against Matska Belmonde, she does it. Because really, what else can she do?

LaF somehow manages to get JP into Will’s body, which is- well, Danny would rather not think about it. Surprisingly, she finds that JP is actually a pretty huge asset to them, even more so in human form, and Danny finds herself spending hours researching with him, looking for any way to prepare themselves for what’s to come.

They read about witchcraft and demons and superstitions. JP calculates the statistical outcome of various situations and LaFontaine spends a lot of their time trying to develop different chemical solutions that could take down an unknown evil.

They read about Hellmouths and portals; about mythical heroes and a supposed blade wielded by the last hero of Silas centuries ago, long thought buried under the rubble of wars past. Once JP starts going into detail about the ‘S’ encrusted above a red ruby in its hilt, Danny starts to lose patience with the whole process.

‘Let me guess,’ she says, from where she’s resting her head on a large, dusty book. ‘The hero must be worthy of the blade, find its hiding place, wield it with the strength of a hundred, am I right?’

‘Well, yes,’ JP says. ‘How did you come to know of this, Miss Lawrence?’

‘I’ve read The Sword in the Stone,’ Danny says.

‘A thrilling tale,’ JP responds excitedly.

‘Yeah, it’s wild. How about we take that aside and shelve it under the ‘plan B’ heading for now,’ Danny says when she notices JP’s excitable demeanour. ‘It’s gone one in the morning, I’m going to get some sleep. We’ll pick this up again tomorrow.’

‘Goodnight, Miss Lawrence, pleasant dreams!’ JP calls after her.

Danny mutters to herself about dreaming of living _anywhere else_ in the goddamn world, before coming to a stop outside Laura’s room, deciding to check up on her. She knocks and enters to find Laura at her desk, staring tiredly at her computer screen, an empty box of cookies next to her.

‘Hey, how was research with JP?’ Laura asks when she spots her.

Danny groans and comes to sit beside Laura, her arms and head falling upon the desk.

‘Useless,’ she mumbles into the crook of her arm.

‘I can’t say I’m doing much better,’ Laura replies dejectedly.

‘Wonderful.’

‘I’m just gonna finish reading this,’ Laura says, scrolling down.

‘Knock yourself out,’ Danny yawns. She’s been awake for thirty-six hours straight, if an uncomfortable nap against Laura’s desk is the best she’s going to get, she’ll take it.

She must slip into sleep sometime soon after that, the rhythmic tapping of Laura’s fingers on her key sending her off, because when she next opens her eyes, it’s light outside.

She rubs the sleep from her eyes and notices the feeling of an added weight on her back. From her awkward position, she can catch her reflection in Laura’s black computer screen and sees Laura herself asleep, her top half resting against Danny’s back, much like the other day before Danny had had to wrestle her away from getting into a fight with Carmilla.

She smiles at the two of the in the reflection, before readjusting and closing her eyes.

She could definitely do with a few more hours rest.

 

 

(v.)

 _When the apocalypse does come,_  
_I will rebuild our city with my tongue._  
_I will suck this world’s ashes from your fingers._  
_I will refuse to let the fires of this hell_  
_be the only thing that makes us sweat._

_When the apocalypse comes,  
so will we._

_- _Sierra DeMulder,_ When the Apocalypse Comes_

 

 

 

Winter starts to give way to Spring. Nothing gets better.

The Anglerfish disappears. The campus shakes. Students go missing.

They know that this is it.

 

‘We’re going to war again, aren’t we?’ Laura whispers into the darkness of her room.

The two of them are lying side by side late at night after a meeting with the others. Everyone headed to their own rooms, resigning themselves to the worst, whilst the vampires headed off to find more blood. They all knew they would probably need it.

‘Yeah,’ Danny says. Lying would be pointless. ‘Yeah, we are.’

Nothing else is said. Nothing needs to be.

Laura doesn’t realise she’s trembling until she feels Danny’s fingers reach for her own. Her thumb rubs soothing circles on her palm, before bringing their fingers together. She turns to face Danny, who is looking at her in a way that causes her breath to catch, and her heartrate to pick up.

It’s with that one look that Laura is hit, full-force, with months of pent up emotion; of want and fear and _love._ And she feels like she wants to scream from the mountaintops or dive headfirst into a freezing lake because Danny is looking at her like she built the world, and Laura realises that she would maybe do just that for Danny.

In a second they collide, all tongue and teeth, Danny’s fingers pressing harshly into her hips and Laura’s hands tangled tightly in long, red hair. Laura gasps as Danny sucks on her neck, her tongue then soothing the tender skins, before moving onto another spot.

Back when Laura had first started at Silas, and first spotted Danny at the front of her literature class and developed an intense crush, she had imagined this moment. In her mind, it had been soft and sensual and, filled with gentle touches and whispered assurances as she lifted her arms as Danny would pull her shirt up and over her head.

But this? This is anything but. It’s raw and desperate and all they have.

Later, when Laura comes with Danny’s name on her lips, Danny swallows her cries and lays her down gently.

Before they fall asleep, naked and entangled, and Laura finds herself wishing with all her might that maybe, just maybe, the world won’t come falling down tomorrow, and that they’ll emerge from the ashes, broken but breathing, and have their chance at this. At together.

Laura takes one last look at Danny, who is breathing evenly into a pillow, arm draped across Laura’s waist, and promises to herself she will do all in her power to make that happen.

 

Apocalypse be damned.

 

 

(v.)

 _'But whatever_  
_However_  
_Whenever this ends I want you to know_  
_That right now_  
_I love you forever'_  
_— Andrea Gibson, How It Ends_

 

 

 

It happens quickly.

 

There’s fire and screaming and pain and The Dean-, because _of course_ she’s the one behind all of this.

Laura is pulling a wounded LaFontaine out of the firing line. JP viciously tears a demon’s head from its shoulders to protect Perry, looking nothing short of scandalized at his own actions. Kirsch, Theo and Mel are standing in formation, back to back, fending off evil from all angles, arrows flying and blades slashing. Even Carmilla and Mattie are in the fray, tearing and snarling like wild animals.

Danny has just managed to defeat another creature of the undead, bashing its head in with a stray piece of wood after it had broken her sword clean in two, when she sees it.

The Dean is heading towards the pit, towards the Hellmouth, eyes dark with fury, cutting down students as she goes.

Danny knows that if she reaches her target, if she activates the ancient evil, they’ll never win. The demons will never stop coming and the world will burn.

She scrabbles for a weapon, any weapon. Her searching fingers come into contact with a cool, hard blade and she grabs it. She glances down and sees the golden ‘S’, sees the dark ruby, flashing with the reflection of the surrounding firelight.

‘Thank you, JP,’ she mutters through gritted teeth, and tightens her grip.

Her feet hit the ground faster than ever before as she weaves in and out of obstacles, never taking her eyes off her target. She jumps over a fallen tree, dodges a stray arrow which manages to catch her left shoulder, and continues on.

In a mere few seconds The Dean will have reached the pit and it will all be over.

Danny pushes herself even harder, heart threatening to give out as it beats wildly against her chest.

Briefly, in her peripheral vision she catches Laura turning to look at her, eyes widening and mouth falling open in warning.

Four feet, three feet, two feet.

 

It happens quickly.

 

The Dean turns just as Danny reaches her, and Danny doesn’t hesitate before thrusting the blade into her heart.

They’re almost chest to chest as Danny watches the shock in the monster’s eyes be replaced with rage, before closing shut as she lets out a piercing scream that shakes the earth around them.

‘Looks like you lose,’ Danny mutters bitterly.

‘Says the girl born for battle,’ The Dean forces out, before slumping to the ground, skin flaking and bones turning to ash.

Danny stands over the deteriorating corpse, panting and clutching her side.

They won. They really won.

Before she has time to laugh, to cheer, to look for the others, her vision swims and a sudden light-headedness makes her stumble back.

Her brow furrows in confusion, before she looks down, pulling a shaking hand away to find it drenched in blood.

Next to The Dean lies a gleaming, silver dagger, blood dripping steadily from the tip.

Once the realisation hits her, her legs give out and her knees hit the hard, ruined ground with a thud and her breathing stutters.

Before she falls completely, she feels someone’s arms around her, her back resting against their front.

‘Oh my God, oh my God, Danny.’

And although her hearing has become muffled, and she’s sure her vision will soon follow, she knows that it’s Laura who’s caught her.

Laura always catches her.

Her head begins to loll against Laura’s shoulder as she can make out her screams for LaFontaine and JP to help.

‘Danny, stay awake. Danny _please_ , come on.’

Danny tries to speak, but her body is racked with a violent cough, and she can feel blood catching in her throat, making a trail over her lips and down her jaw.

‘Don’t speak, just hang on,’ Laura cries, her hand coming to grip Danny’s tightly.

‘Don’t- don’t blame yourself,’ Danny manages to wheeze.

Breathing is getting harder and the pain is transforming from an agonising burning into a tired ache.

‘Danny-,’

‘Promise me,’ Danny whispers through a mouthful of blood. ‘Promise me you won’t drift away.’

She fixes her gaze on Laura, using the last of her strength to grab at her hand weakly. She focuses all she can on speaking the words she’s been holding in for so long. If these are to be her last words, there’s no other way she’d want to end her story.

She does her best, but speaking has become so difficult and she thinks the first word gets stuck in her throat, but she can tell that Laura understands her.

‘-ve you, Hollis.’

‘Danny. Danny, I love you. Please don’t go, Dann-.’

 

And then, there’s silence, and with the ghost of a smile on her lips, Danny Lawrence drifts away.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so sorry. feel free to yell abuse at me over at just-impolite on tumblr.


End file.
